9 Departments Issue 13 Measures to Comprehensively Support Service Exports

Accelerating the development of service trade is a crucial step in expanding high-level opening-up and fostering new drivers for foreign trade growth.

 Recently, the Ministry of Commerce, together with eight other departments including the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Finance, issued the "Several Policy Measures on Promoting Service Exports", proposing 13 specific measures to provide comprehensive policy support for service exports.

The specific measures include: making full use of central and local existing funding channels to actively support service exports; enhancing the leverage effect of the Service Trade Innovation and Development Guiding Fund; optimizing the zero-tax-rate declaration procedures for service exports; increasing export credit insurance support; improving the bonded supervision system; promoting and regulating cross-border data flows; and supporting enterprises in exploring international markets, among others.

Chen Bo, a Distinguished Research Fellow at Liaoning University, stated in an interview with the Shanghai Securities News that facilitation measures and institutional safeguards originally provided for goods trade, such as export tax rebates, export certification, and related financial loan support, are now beginning to be applied and implemented in service trade. This will significantly enhance the competitiveness of service trade enterprises.

Wang Xiaosong, a professor at the School of Economics at Renmin University of China, told the Shanghai Securities News that service trade covers a wide range of fields and diverse business formats. The "Policy Measures" propose concrete and actionable promotion measures for different categories, covering emerging areas such as digital services, R&D design, supply chain management, and geographic information. They feature notable comprehensiveness and systematicity, fully considering the new developments in service trade.

As a core component of service trade, the development of digital trade relies on frequent cross-border data activities. The "Policy Measures" clearly state the promotion and regulation of cross-border data flows. Initiatives include: formulating a catalog of important data and issuing more operational guidelines for identifying important data; optimizing, adjusting, and dynamically updating the negative list for data exit in pilot free trade zones; and researching and exploring the formation of a nationwide negative list for data exit in pilot free trade zones.

"The above initiatives will open up broader development space for related industries and inject new growth momentum into service exports," said Bai Ming, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, in an interview with the Shanghai Securities News. For a long time, China has implemented relatively prudent regulatory policies for cross-border data flows. The earlier regulatory framework placed greater emphasis on preventing data security risks, leaving room for optimization and improvement in terms of the convenience and efficiency of data flows. As the system for cross-border data transmission becomes gradually more sound and standardized, and data management capabilities continuously improve, it is expected that restrictions on data flows may be appropriately relaxed in the future.

The "Policy Measures" also propose: supporting qualified regions, such as the Lingang New Area of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone and the Hainan Free Trade Port, to carry out international data services. To meet the development needs of new business formats and models in service trade, support will be provided to establish international data centers and cloud computing centers in pilot free trade zones, the Hainan Free Trade Port, national comprehensive pilot demonstration zones for expanding the opening-up of the service sector, and other areas, to provide data processing services for all types of enterprises in need.

It is reported that China has currently established international communication service access points in multiple regions.

Looking ahead, Wang Xiaosong believes that while China's service trade development started relatively late, it has accumulated certain industrial advantages in emerging fields such as the digital economy, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing, possessing the potential for "overtaking on the curve." In the future, China's service exports will be characterized by two core features: technology empowerment and the integration of the digital and real economies. Emerging technologies will be deeply embedded in all aspects of service trade, the digital economy and the real economy will be deeply integrated, and service trade and goods trade will also mutually reinforce each other. This represents both future trends and China's advantages in developing service trade.